Love and Hate Amazon

Yesterday I had an uneventful flight back to Los Angeles from Tokyo. My flight to Salt Lake got delayed an hour and change but I have come to expect that. I have started using my travel time to read and had my latest book read before the plane even left the ground at Hanada airport. When I finally arrived back in Salt Lake, one of my first tasks included finding more books to read.

I used to love Amazon as a bookstore. When my local bookstore didn't have a book, I could find it on the Internet and have it shipped to my house. Unfortunately a lot of people felt the same way and it didn't take long for a large number of bookstores to go out of business. Now it seems that there is only one large bookstore still around: Barnes and Noble. I will be flying again on Tuesday and don't have time to wait for an Amazon book to arrive.

I went to my closest Barnes and Noble only to find that I already owned every book they had that I am interested in reading. I have been there recently and already picked them clean. I did a quick Internet search to look for other bookstores in the area. It seems that the only other bookstores to survive Amazon's success are religious ones. While I do appreciate religion and have a large percentage of my bookshelf space devoted to those types of books, that is not what I wanted to look for last night. So I drove to the next closest Barnes and Noble. Fortunately they had a number of books of interest not currently in my personal library.

Amazon is a great place to purchase books and a lot of other things. However if you are just browsing for a book or need it immediately, I highly recommend visiting a local bookstore. Right now I am reading a lot of sailing and climbing books. While Amazon does a great job of providing a preview of the book online, it just doesn't compare to being able to leaf through the book to help you decide if it is the right one for you.